probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.
we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."
at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.
the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.
the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.
what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.
here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.
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There is something I absolutely loathe about fashion content on the whole.
"What is your color season? Buy a whole new wardrobe." - I assure you that I am not throwing out perfectly good things I already have.
"Find your aesthetic and build a whole wardrobe around it" - again, this involves getting rid of things and buying new ones.
"Instead of buying this sweater, buy one that is pure wool." - I have news for you about how affordable pure wool is.
"Just go thrifting!" - Thrifting is not the gold mine that people seem to think it is. A lot of influencers are getting lucky because they live in cities where there is a relatively high turnover of stock at the thrift store. My average thrift store visit ends with me buying one or two things that 1. I like. 2. Are reasonably priced for the condition they're in. 3. Are actually my size.
If I had to sum up my irritation with this, it's that a lot of fashion content (and interior design from what I've seen) is that it is built on the idea that your life should have a unified aesthetic. But I would wager that most people have pieces and parts of different aesthetics cobbled together across different periods of their life. And there's nothing wrong with that. You don't have to start over every time your "aesthetic" shifts a bit.
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so one of the things that's so horrifying about birth control is that you have to, like, navigate this incredibly personal choice about your body and yet also face the epitome of misogyny. like, someone in the comments will say it wasn't that bad for me, and you'll be utterly silenced. like, everyone treats birth control like something that's super dirty. like, you have no fucking information or control over this thing because certain powerful people find it icky.
first it was the oral contraceptives. you went on those young, mostly for reasons unrelated to birth control - even your dermatologist suggested them to control your acne. the list of side effects was longer than your arm, and you just stared at it, horrified.
it made you so mentally ill, but you just heard that this was adulthood. that, yes, there are of course side effects, what did you expect. one day you looked up yasmin makes me depressed because surely this was far too intense, and you discovered that over 12,000 lawsuits had been successfully filed against the brand. it remains commonly prescribed on the open market. you switched brands a few times before oral contraceptives stopped being in any way effective. your doctor just, like, shrugged and said you could try a different brand again.
and the thing is that you're a feminist. you know from your own experience that birth control can be lifesaving, and that even when used for birth control - it is necessary healthcare. you have seen it save so many people from such bad situations, yourself included. it is critical that any person has access to birth control, and you would never suggest that we just get rid of all of it.
you were a little skeeved out by the implant (heard too many bad stories about it) and figured - okay, iud. it was some of the worst pain you've ever fucking experienced, and you did it with a small number of tylenol in your system (3), like you were getting your bikini line waxed instead of something practically sewn into your body.
and what's wild is that because sometimes it isn't a painful insertion process, it is vanishingly rare to find a doctor that will actually numb the area. while your doctor was talking to you about which brand to choose, you were thinking about the other ways you've been injured in your life. you thought about how you had a suspicious mole frozen off - something so small and easy - and how they'd numbed a huge area. you thought about when you broke your wrist and didn't actually notice, because you'd thought it was a sprain.
your understanding of pain is that how the human body responds to injury doesn't always relate to the actual pain tolerance of the person - it's more about how lucky that person is physically. maybe they broke it in a perfect way. maybe they happened to get hurt in a place without a lot of nerve endings. some people can handle a broken femur but crumble under a sore tooth. there's no true way to predict how "much" something actually hurts.
in no other situation would it be appropriate for doctors to ignore pain. just because someone can break their wrist and not feel it doesn't mean no one should receive pain meds for a broken wrist. it just means that particular person was lucky about it. it should not define treatment.
in the comments of videos about IUDs, literally thousands of people report agony. blinding, nauseating, soul-crushing agony. they say things like i had 2 kids and this was the worst thing i ever experienced or i literally have a tattoo on my ribs and it felt like a tickle. this thing almost killed me or would rather run into traffic than ever feel that again.
so it's either true that every single person who reports severe pain is exaggerating. or it's true that it's far more likely you will experience pain, rather than "just a pinch." and yet - there's nothing fucking been done about it. it kind of feels like a shrug is layered on top of everything - since technically it's elective, isn't it kind of your fault for agreeing to select it? stop being fearmongering. stop being defensive.
you fucking needed yours. you are almost weirdly protective of it. yours was so important for your physical and mental health. it helped you off hormonal birth control and even started helping some of your symptoms. it still fucking hurt for no fucking reason.
once while recovering from surgery, they offered you like 15 days of vicodin. you only took 2 of them. you've been offered oxy for tonsillitis. you turned down opioids while recovering from your wisdom tooth extraction. everything else has the option. you fucking drove yourself home after it, shocked and quietly weeping, feeling like something very bad had just happened. the nurse that held your hand during the experience looked down at you, tears in her eyes, and said - i know. this is cruelty in action.
and it's fucked up because the conversation is never just "hey, so the way we are doing this is fucking barbaric and doctors should be required to offer serious pain meds" - it's usually something around the lines of "well, it didn't kill you, did it?"
you just found out that removing that little bitch will hurt just as bad. a little pinch like how oral contraceptives have "some" serious symptoms. like your life and pain are expendable or not really important. like maybe we are all hysterical about it?
hysteria comes from the latin word for uterus, which is great!
you stand here at a crossroads. like - this thing is so important. did they really have to make it so fucking dangerous. and why is it that if you make a complaint, you're told - i didn't even want you to have this in the first place. we're told be careful what you wish for. we're told that it's our fault for wanting something so illict; we could simply choose not to need medication. that maybe if we don't like the scraps, we should get ready to starve.
we have been saying for so long - "i'm not asking you to remove the option, i'm asking you to reconsider the risk." this entire time we hear: well, this is what you wanted, isn't it?
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That's our baby hero
Protective Amity Park Au but maybe not like you would think?
Danny's identity wasn't as hidden as Sam, Tucker, Jazz and him thought. His identity was an open secret, in fact his whole town knew that Danny was their hero Phantom, well everyone but his oblivious parents but they were a case of their own. The thing was his entire town knew about his oh so big secret identity and that he was the one trying to save them from ghosts 90% of the time as well as from his own parents crazy inventions at times.
Dash shoving him into lockers like a bully? Danny didn't look good and Dash tried in crude ways to give him reasons to skip classes to rest. It also later was a good move to hide him from snoopy government agents also known as the Guys in White or GIW for short. Really his bullying played perfectly into him finding creative ways to get Danny to skip classes for rest.
Valerie hunting him and other ghosts? Well she was hunting him in the very beginning, but then it became an attempt to make him stop fighting the ghosts on their behalf but in the end it turned into her trying her best to be the support to him that Sam and Tucker couldn't be in a fight. Let alone taking 'night shifts' from him so Danny could get at least a good nights rest every now and then.
Sam's parents the Mansons? Sure they didn't like him that much from the start anyway but most of their anger later stemmed from the danger their daughter was willingly get into to help their reckless teenhero that shouldn't be a hero at his age anyway. Let alone shoulder the responsible for their entire town at the age of 14.
Tuckers parents? They were glad any time Danny stayed over with their son, even attempting to subtitle convince the boys to have more sleepovers at their home. Surely being a hero with ghost powers and living in a house of ghost hunting parents wasn't easy on Danny. They were glad that they could give him some peace at their home. They willingly ignored it when Danny showed up late night in Tuckers room, getting patched up by their son.
The entire town apparently hating him with all these negative newspapers and comments? All fake in a desperate attempt to get the 14 years old teenager with a bad sleeping schedule and powers to stop risking his damned life, half-life. Surely if they appeared not thankful the kid would get the hint and stop playing hero. Like seriously he was a kid! Who's bright idea was it to let a kid fight these dangerous appearing ghosts?! Oh right the poor kids parents were incompetent when it came to ghost hunting and it wasn't like they could just up and do it without destroying the kids confidence. Plus the GIW were no help either.
Vlad becoming Mayor was not exactly their plan but they thought maybe they could use that as some help to convince Danny more that he didn't need to play hero for them just because he got powers now. That didn't turn out like they hoped and THAT plan was dismissed quickly. Especially when the GIW showed up. They learned their lesson sort of quickly after that, at least when it came to people from out of Amity did not mean well.
Lancer, at first when Danny first showed up as Phantom, had attempted to get into contact with the Justice League several times, so that Danny would actually get the professional help he needed and get some sleep at night as well as the time he needed for his schooling so that heroing wouldn't be the only career path he would be forced into. The additional point of getting the kid training too for his powers was also very tempting, there are only so many chemical breakers they could allow the him to break before they HAD to sort of ban him from touching them again.
But when the GIW appeared in their town they stopped trying to reach the Justice League. Suspecting that that was the answer they sent in regards to their SOS calls. Amity Parks protectiveness over their teenheroes that sacrificed to much skyrocketed. They started to sabotage the Agents subtitle. Always working within the limits of the orders and finding the loop holes.
"Oh but we did comply, not our fault that you guys tripped and let Phantom escape."
"Wupp, sorry I got that from the Fentons for self defence, but it looks like I need to work on my aim."
"I am so sorry, my car is stuck! See my tire is popped I can't get out of your vans way."
The fact that Amity Parks weather report was more a report on the ghosts, the Fenton parents and the GIW was all a tactic for them all to keep each other informed so they could execute any step to ensure their -by now- towns sweethearts safety. Even if they still tried to turn the poor kid away from being a hero with all the unnecessary mean comments and articles.
So when one day a hero from the Justice League showed up it was predictable that they all were suspicious of it. Even more so when that hero came with a bunch of teenage heroes. Apparently they were here to investigate a bunch of ignored calls one of the teenheroes found in their call logs. Some of the adults eyed Lancer who in turn was glaring at the heroes fessed up, he hadn't attempted to call them ever since they decided to sent the GIW into their town. Which apparently was more of a cover as these heroes showed an interest in the Fentons research of Ectoplasm pretty quickly.
Well now Batman and his flock of bats and birds were confronted with a very unhappy town that was apparently very protective of their hero and 'accidentally' continued to manage to block them from making contact with said teenhero. And who where these Guys in white suits that tried to suck it up to Batman? Better question why was the entire town suddenly hostile towards them when they started to look into the Fenton Family that had a connection to Lazarus Water?
Meanwhile Danny is confused by his towns newfound favouritism towards Batman and his entourage and how whenever he went to find out what was that about everyone seems to deflect. Even Sam, Tucker and Jazz were confused by what was going on!
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